


All The Little Things

by piecesofalice



Category: Psych
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-18
Updated: 2009-12-18
Packaged: 2017-10-04 12:54:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piecesofalice/pseuds/piecesofalice
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From little things, big things grow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All The Little Things

\---

  
_ "It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important."_   
\-- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

  
\---

His hand was shaking. Slightly, along the curve of his knuckle where he held the razor and it was all he could do to meet his own eyes in the mirror.

  
"You need a _shave_, Lassiter," he mumbled at himself, because he'd been in bed for two days straight and a beard wasn't right for work and he had _no_ clean clothes and what the hell day was it anyway?

  
From the reflection in the mirror, he saw the sheets in his bed stir.

  
You couldn't have paid to keep the smirk off his face.

\----

  
_ **PAPERCLIPS** _

  
"It's Wednesday," she said to him, like he was supposed to know what that meant.

  
"Yes?"

  
"We always go to the stationery room on a Wednesday."

  
Of course.

  
She lead the way, and smelt like a blueberry muffin, talking about a catalogue she got in the mail advertising blow-up mattresses for $29.95, and how her brother was coming to stay and she should buy one. He'd gotten so good at pretending to listen, to absorbing information despite not listening to a word she said, in case she called him on it and he needed to recall all the information he'd just pretended to hear.

  
How could he listen, really, when her hair moved like that?

  
"Paperclips," he blurted out, suddenly, as they walked into the cramped supply room. She turned to him and her eyes were wide, like blueberries (or something), and she smiled. A half-lidded smile, like the one when he slipped about peaches or mumbled out her birthday when Vick had asked last Tuesday and he didn't like it. Not at all.

  
Except, of course, he did.

\----

  
He's not being creepy, but he finds himself self-concious as he stands in the door-frame that separates the bathroom from his bedroom.

  
There's a million and one cliches he could bring up, and a thousand he'd kick his own ass for thinking, but he'd be lying if he said they weren't true. Aphrodite, Marilyn Monroe, Venus, whoever - they had _nothing_ on the spray of blonde hair across his serviceable white sheets and the curve of the body underneath them. Half a breast, exposed to the mid-morning air, one arm arched above her head like she was in mid-pirouette and she's easily the most beautiful thing he's ever seen.

  
He knows why his hands are shaking: because they've been all over her.

  
And he can't believe it, he won't believe it - because one lucky weekend from a police station, where tomorrow they go back to being Lassiter-and-O'Hara, seems as close to reality as anything painted by Botticelli.

  
\---

  
_ **POP TARTS** _

  
"Do you want a Pop Tart?"

  
"Um, no."

  
"Why? They're delicious! I'll split a pack with you!"

  
"O'Hara. Pop Tarts?"

  
"Come on, Carlton..."

  
"Fine. But don't burn them. They don't taste as good."

\---

  
His name carries into the bathroom, where he's gone back to try and tame his face back into Detective mode. It's not working, mainly because he could see her pull back the sheet and walk, naked, across his bedroom floor, stretching up and reaching for the ceiling as his name fell from her mouth after a yawn and she sounded like his first sexual experience and last in two syllables and a gulp of air.

  
Because he can never hear her say his name in the _old_ way - "Carlton," with a hint of irony and the slightest amusement, rounded in professionalism but with a lick of something more - because he'll always hear the _new_ way now, the "Carlton," that's holding something too much like lust and love and he feels the place where she bit him on the shoulder and smiles.

  
Her face appears in the mirror besides his. She's wrapped in one of his work shirts - of course - and the whole thing feels so stupidly natural, he has to break and shatter the mood with his own typical awkwardness, and just hopes she picks it up and puts it back together again.

  
"I can't shave, it's gotta be blunt, I'll just go down and grab some from the store-"

  
She's kissing him, standing on tip-toes with her hand running up his chest and stopping in the hair near his neck, and he forgets everything. Ever.

  
\---

  
_ **PENNIES FROM THE GROUND** _

  
The smile on her face is a mile wide, and he's kind of confused so he stuffs his hands in his pockets and hopes to whoever she says something.

  
"Where did you find it?"

  
"Main Street."

  
"Outside the coffee place?!"

  
"Yes..."

  
She begins to squeal, because that's the only way to describe it, and jumps up to hug him.

  
"Good luck! All day! Today is awesome!"

  
And he's smiling, but he doesn't know why.

  
\---

  
"You're shaking," and he wants to answer "duh", but her hips in his shirt are making it hard to speak. "Do you want me to do it?"

  
That brings him round. "What? Grow a beard and shave it?"

  
"Shutup," she smirks, and hops up onto the porcelain bench and pulls him between her legs by the elastic of his boxer shorts. "Where's your cream?"

  
He points. The shirt isn't hiding _anything_, and her thighs are clenching his hips and he needs to think about baseball scores. Centipedes. _Returning to work tomorrow, safe in the knowledge he's not just inside his partner's head, but her pants, too. _

  
She shakes the can, sprays white foam onto her hands and begins to rub it over his face.

  
Up his neck, across his cheeks - stopping to clean it from his mouth and she squeaks when he pretends to bite her - and he can't find a proper use for his hands now hers are doing their task, so he places them on both her legs and squeezes.

  
\---

  
_ **BULLETS** _

  
She'd almost been shot.

  
Almost. Fired at. With a gun.

  
Shot. At.

  
He did what he had to do.

  
He kissed her, in guilt and fear and other reasons, because he knew he couldn't just lose her, have her one second then lose her the next without feeling this and he wasn't even sure if that's what he'd wanted.

  
He couldn't have her. Then lose her.

  
So he kissed her.

  
And she kissed back.

  
\----

  
The razor runs up over his chin, and she's concentrating so hard, he can see the sides of her eyes creasing. Her body's tense, she moves a little on the countertop, and he begins to massage her thighs as she reaches his cheeks.

  
"With the hair, O'Hara."

  
"I know."

  
She smells like him, he realises, because the last shower they had was yesterday and that was together, but it's not a put off. Because it's him-on-her, and she's in his shirt and shaving his face and the egomaniac inside him has a moment of glory as his hands slide up under the tails of his work shirt and up the curve of her behind.

  
Their eyes lock, and she forces his chin up. Slides the razor along his face, wipes it clean, slides it again and wipes it clean.

  
She's in power now, and his ego is chained back up but his hands are running up her lap and chest and his face becomes clean one stroke at a time.

  
\---

  
** _PANTS_ ** __

  
"They have too many buttons."

  
"They do not!"

  
"They were hard to get off."

  
"Right, probably because you've never had to take such nice pants off such a nice girl."

  
"Oh, I see. No doubt you're completely right, O'Hara."

  
Silence.

  
"Let's stay here, right here."

  
"Monday's going to be hard to explain."

  
"Til Monday?"

  
"Really?"

  
"Yes."

  
"Okay. Unless someone gets murdered, til Monday."

  
\---

  
The finishing result makes them both sad, and she runs her hands across his face.

  
"If you had told me on Thursday -" she begins, but for once, he stops her talking.

  
"It's not Monday yet."

  
"No."

  
His shirt is taken off her, placed aside and he loves the shape of her lips and her collarbones and the tiny, delicate mole between her breasts that's so perfectly round, it's a mathematical wonder.

  
She loves the curl of his cowlick, the pressure and the pace, the dimples she's seen more in these two days than ever before and the lines of his back and shoulders and how they seem to fit her perfectly.

  
His smooth cheek brushes against hers.

  
The counter makes a loud screech as he slides her forward onto him.

  
And his hands don't shake, because everything they are isn't in this bedroom, but in the sum of their parts.

  
\---

  
_FIN. _

  
\---


End file.
